How does editing work in the Q&A section?

Only monks of at least Level 5: Beadle can submit questions to this section.
All registered monks can submit answers.
The nodes which get created for the questions and answers can only be
edited by QandAEditors.
(Even so, the contributor of the question/answer gets credit for any XP generated by the
node getting up-/down-voted.)

The QandAEditors have complete liberty to create, modify, and delete QandA
nodes as they see fit.
They endeavor to ensure that all the information in that section is factually correct and
concise. However, since QandAEditors aren't always the greatest Perl gurus in the world,
they are expected to rely on feedback from the PerlMonks community to keep QandA quality
high.

QandAEditors respond to requests for action in the QandA section.
If you would like them to do something, such as improve the wording of a question,
or remove a bad answer, send your request via /msg [QandAEditors].

When viewing a CatQ, the CatA's, if any, are listed below it. This is not a thread in the usual sense, as it does not display anything below the CatA's (that is, replies of CatA's).
Similarly, when viewing a CatA, it shows at the top which CatQ it is an answer to, and which Category it's in; but it does not say "in reply to" and "in thread", as is done for normal note-type replies.

On the other hand, a CatA is a thread root in the usual sense (like a root post in SoPW, for example), in terms of displaying its replies.

However, the similarity is superficial. In normal sections, the root field of each reply points to the root post of the thread.
In CatQ&A, the root field of each reply points not to the CatA to which it is a reply, but to the category (a QandASection node) containing the CatQ!
Therefore, when you use Super Search, you won't be able to find CatA replies using the section selector: there is no checkbox for QandASection.
Actually, if you try it, you will get some hits, but these are from the very early days, when CatA replies had their root field set to the CatA itself, rather than to the category node.

CatA replies can be found by SuperSearching for replies to nodes owned by QandAEditors.
Where the right-most column of the results says Re:SoPW, those are threads (some? all?) which have been SoPWified.
Where the right-most column says Re:CatA, those are the old threads which have their 'root' field set to the CatA (as mentioned above), rather than to the category (the QandASection node).This search finds just those two classes of replies.

QandAEditors can convert a QandA submission into a SoPW post,
at their own discretion. (There is no mechanism for the reverse transformation, however.)
Note that this does not require the node to be in an unapproved state -- unlike the 'Move node to another section' moderation power which Friars have.

The mechanics of editing

Things work a little bit differently for questions and for answers.
We'll talk about questions first, then answers.

To edit a question:

When viewing a question, you can edit the title in the box labeled 'Title' and the body in the box labeled 'Optional Description'. (It's "optional" because it is at least theoretically possible to phrase the entire question in the title.)
You can also set the category. For this, there is a pulldown menu right above the 'Title' box.
When you're done, press the 'Submit' button.

To remove a question:

First, be sure to Delete all of the question's answers, if any!Then click the delete link which is right at the top of the node.
(Note: this convenience link requires javascript to function. If you don't have javascript enabled, you can simply add ;op=nuke to the node's basic URL.)

To move a question out of CatQA into SoPW:

Find the SOPWify! link, immediately below the body of the question (above the category pulldown menu). Click it.
(As above, this simply re-fetches the node with op=sopwify added to the URL.)

To edit an answer:

For this, you must be viewing the answer's node. (From the parent question node, click the "Answer: ..." title link of the answer you wish to edit.)
Scroll to the bottom and edit the title and/or text.
Click the 'update' button when done.

To remove an answer:

For this, you must be viewing the parent question's thread, not the answer's node.
You may remove any number of answers in one submission (so please exercise caution).
Use the 'submit' button located immediately below the question, i.e. above the list of answers.
In the header above each question, there are two checkboxes: 'delete' and 'kill'.
They have identical effects, except that 'kill' also deducts 1 XP from the answer's author.

Edits to categorized questions and answers do not produce entries in the
janitation log.

Note that nothing special is shown in the QandAEditors Nodelet when viewing a categorized question or answer. Neither is the Moderation Nodelet displayed.

When viewing a Categorized Question, the name of the original
poster is shown with the Question and each Answer.
However, when viewing a Categorized Answer, this info is not
displayed.

The ID of the user who posted a Cat Q or A is stored in the node's
original_author field.
If you're a pmdevil, you can click the Dump Fields link
in the PmDev Nodelet to see this (and other) fields.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other